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Alive 13

supernatural


                     The First Full CT60 demo by Evolution!

We've  waited a while for this one.  In fact Evolution showed us a nice  and
skeletal  preview at the Outline '04 party,  with the confident promise from
Deez that it would be finished just a few weeks later,  and much bigger than
before.

Well  that's  me  taught  a  harsh  lesson  about  believing  in   Evolution
timescales.  Maybe they really meant "Evolution", as in a process that takes
thousands and millions of years to evolve a small rodentlike creature,  into
something capable of building the Empire State building?!

(Pause  to  listen  to gale of faint laughter from the  rest  of  the  Atari
scene! Ah well....)

But  after a two year silence,  fingers were pulled,  fragments of code were
dragged  from  the dusty graves of hard drives.  The same fragments of  code
were  despairingly  thrown to one side and they started again,  so  what  we
eventually  got  was  almost completely different from  what  was  shown  at
Outline '04.

Still, it's here now, lets go and spin it up.

It  starts  off  dark and brooding,  which is well in  keeping  with  Deez's
preferred style. An elaborate 'Evolution' logo fades up, then down again.

The  music  strengthens,  and a beat starts,  and we're into the first  main
part.  This is a corridor tour de force.  It's not just a careless trip down
any  old "will that do?" texture.  Deez and company have really taken  great
care here.  The scene presented to us is suitably broken down,  gloomy,  and
menacing,  it is stuffed with all sorts of interesting lighting and textures
and  broken  down  stuff,  as if you are the mute and  helpless  witness  to
something really awful that happened there a decade before!

                    Too late to take a bath here...

This  slowly  fades  out,  then we are greeted with a lone survivor  of  the
original  pre-version of the demo,  as a bunch of 3-D metablobs are  melting
into one another, against a golden syrup backdrop!

This  liquid  and languid screen provides a nice mood change before  we  are
greeted with another textured punch to the kidneys,  as we now spin around a
scrapyard.  This has all sorts of decrepit remnants,  all beautifully drawn.
Never before has crud looked so atmospheric on a Falcon!  There are some odd
bits  which  make you say "What the f*ck?!" thrown in for no  extra  charge,
such as a giant slug reposing on top of one of the junked cars!

                          Hang on, that's my car in there!

There  is another step-change to something less urgent, with the  obligatory
high  quality  still piccy.  This continues the overall 'dark' theme of  the
demo,  as we see that some dude is getting tortured,  or simply going out of
his mind to the light of a 40 watt bulb! For some reason, it puts me in mind
of some Agent T. pictures.

There  is  a  part which almost looks like a greets  screen,  with  a  giant
textured  spinning 'whatever?' with phrases that sound like crew names,  but
aren't.

"Forces  Phenomena beyond normal scientific understanding". They *could*  be
crew names if you concentrated really hard!

As a demo goes,  it is very grandiose but fairly short,  as we reach the end
of the main part.   A red pyramidal 'Supernatural' title appears then  fades
away.

But  we're  not done yet,  as there is a change of music to  something  more
'amigasynth'  or  Ace  Synth sounding,  and a slowly spinning  voxel  vortex
appears.  This  is  merely the background effect as a lengthy  infotext  and
related  credits scroll up the screen,  there is quite a lengthy explanation
of how the demo came together (eventually.)

What  we have here is a generally slow and stately progress.  Evolution have
given  us a worthy first big demo for the CT60,  even if it feels that  some
stuff was still left out. This is way overdue, but still very welcome.

Of  course,  we  didn't have too long to wait and see what the Dead  Hackers
were  going to do,  but that is another whole different story which we  will
tell elsewhere!


 Pro's..
It's the FIRST full-sized demo for the '060!
Nicely slow and atmospheric..
First class texturemapping..
Great design..

 Con's..
It's just a little bit on the short side..
It's very late! Can we have the next one a bit quicker?

CiH, for Alive Mag, July '06..

Alive 13